UNITED NATIONS — Evidently heedless of U.S. attempts to engineer a thaw in Turkish-Israeli relations, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey used his appearance before the annual General Assembly on Thursday to enumerate a long list of grievances with Israel, a former regional ally.

Erdogan was the second major Middle Eastern leader addressing the General Assembly, with the widespread focus on the region’s most intractable problem, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, due to culminate Friday with speeches by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian authority.

Representatives of the so-called Quartet — the United States, the United Nations, the EU and Russia — were still trying late Thursday to reach an agreement on a statement about moving peace negotiations forward, designed to counterbalance the controversial proposal for U.N. membership that Abbas has vowed to present.

At the General Assembly, a couple of hours earlier, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, delivered one of his characteristic anti-Western broadsides, embroidered with tinges of religious mysticism. He blamed the United States, Israel and Europe for the global recession and a litany of other ills. He also suggested that the U.S. military’s killing of Osama bin Laden in May and the disposal of his body at sea was part of a dark conspiracy to conceal the real perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

His remarks provoked what has become a ritual large-scale walkout of delegations led by the United States.

Erdogan, describing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “bleeding wound” that the international community can no longer accept, blamed Israel for thwarting all attempts to solve the problem. From nuclear weapons to control of the occupied territory to humanitarian aid, Erdogan said Israel contradicted the wishes and norms of the rest of the world.

“If you want to send a box of tomatoes to Palestine, this is subject to approval from Israel, and I don’t think that is humanitarian,” said Erdogan, suggesting that the new spirit of change in the Middle East meant Israel can no longer continue to foster strife.

Ahmadinejad, appearing before the General Assembly for the seventh straight year, said poverty, homelessness and denial of basic rights were traceable to “greed for materialism in the United States and Europe.”

The Islamic Republic has been estranged from the United States since the Islamic Revolution more than 30 years ago, and Ahmadinejad’s speech has become something of a signature event at the annual session. There were no surprises in either his criticisms or his singular interpretation of world events. As he has done in previous speeches, Ahmadinejad raised questions about the Holocaust, blaming the West for using it as an excuse for unwavering support for Israel and for the oppression of the Palestinian people. “They threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and Sept. 11 with sanctions and military action,” he said.

By the time he got to that line in his 30-minute speech, the low-level U.S. and European diplomats who had been there were no longer around.

The U.S. delegation was the first to leave when Ahmadinejad referred to the Sept. 11 attacks as “mysterious,” going on to suggest that bin Laden’s hasty burial at sea, rather than being brought to trial, was designed to bury the truth of who sent the planes to attack New York and Washington.

“Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea,” Ahmadinejad said. “Would it not have been reasonable to bring to justice and openly to trial the main perpetrator of the incident in order to identify the elements behind the safe space provided for the invading aircraft to attack the twin World Trade towers?”

In an interview he gave to the Associated Press, Ahmadinejad questioned the destruction of the World Trade Center. Ahmadinejad said that as an engineer he’s sure the twin towers were not brought down by jetliners. He said it would have been impossible for two jetliners to bring down the towers simply by hitting them. He said a planned explosion must have taken place.

Ahmadinejad stopped short of saying the United States staged the disaster 10 years ago. But he said there are questions the world should resolve, and noted there are doubters in the United States, as well.

The United States quickly condemned the Iranian president’s speech, as did many other Western governments and nongovernmental organizations. “Mr. Ahmadinejad had a chance to address his own people’s aspirations for freedom and dignity, but instead he again turned to abhorrent anti-Semitic slurs and despicable conspiracy theories,” said Mark Kornblau, the spokesman for the U.S. mission.